Author: mahelland

Achievement, accomplishment, victory
Bravery, sacrifice, service
Competition, being the first, the best
Position, mastery, expertise……..
Winners, highest scores, the ability to overcome obstacles
Make an impact, leave your mark…

From valedictorians to warriors, to priests and kings
From sports champs to Nobel Prize winners, humanitarians and local heroes
We accord them Highest Honors
No one does it better, they’ve graduated magna cum laude

Sometimes what they accomplish is beyond our imagination
We wonder how they did it
They must be smarter or stronger
have more money
more talent
more help.

We use words such as Superior! Magnificent! Brilliant! Exceptional! Impossible!
We shake our heads in disbelief
Stand and cheer and applaud in amazement, appreciation and respect

And sometimes we are themThe best of the best, continually striving for even Higher Honors

But, beyond all this, higher than the highest skyscraper and mountain
farther out than the farthest star
beyond all that man could ever achieve or imagine…
Is the One who truly deserves Highest Honors
The One known as the Most High and Glorious

One blind man touched the elephant’s side and exclaimed with conviction,Why, an elephant is like a wall!
Another, feeling the tusk disagreed. He shouted his truth: An elephant is round and smooth and sharp. An elephant is like a spear.
Another, trying to get hold of a writhing trunk, Decided that an elephant is like a snake.
Another, feeling a leg and knee, Was convinced that elephants are like trees.No, no, no, said another who was enjoying the breeze from a flapping ear, An elephant is like a fan.
Another, who was holding on to the tail, argued That it was more like a rope
And still another, whose cheek felt the swish of the tail’s tuft, argued,Elephants are like paint brushes.

Not one of us, from our limited vantage point, can grasp the whole – but we can catch glimpses and explore facets of the Most High God. When we initially respond to God and begin our journey with Him, it is usually because we have been attracted to one of His attributes. This may be because of our personalities, our strengths, our needs at the time, but this then becomes our primary picture of all that God is.

We will be in trouble if we stay there, and unfortunately many of us do. Some of His attributes we like and can relate to and some we don’t understand, don’t like and then reject altogether. Yet we know what the blind men did not know – that each of us possesses only a sliver of the truth.

God is bigger than what we can get our hearts and minds around.

He is the Most High – transcendent above all, truly receiving the Highest Honors.

This has been our first attribute to study, the fact that He is totally unique, so far beyond what we can imagine, so amazing in quality, so high and lifted up.

He is unfathomable and yet He wants to journey with us. To try to live on your own without God will lead to wrong thinking.

Modern society is crowded, fast paced, and techno crazed.
We rush to keep up,
to live up to ever increasingly expectations
all the while creating multiple masks just to get along.
We never stop to figure out what is actually necessary and what is not.
We’ve become slaves to the chaos.

Solitude frees us from these demands even if only for a short time. We let ourselves thaw out from the overwhelming stress placed on us by ourselves, others and the world.

For a moment we no longer need to impress or are oppressed.

Human relationships are important, but our relationship with God is even more so. Solitude gives us the space to develop that. No one else, just God and us.

In solitude we are alone. Think of it as fasting from people.

Some of us crave this time, while others find the idea uncomfortable at best. We might discover our real selves and what is truly important. We have space to breathe, to linger, and without distractions or demands we begin to see things we never saw before.The truth of who God is comes into focus and we recognize His Presence is with us…… as it always has been.

The seasons and rhythms of life will determine the kind of solitude we can experience. For some it may be on a literal mountain top or in a desert wilderness, for others, a chair in the den in the early morning. Others may retreat to the bathroom, while still others may walk through the woods.

Solitude leaves the busy-ness of life behind. There is a “being still” component that seeks to counteract our culture’s belief in productivity as a badge of honor. Many of us are running from or avoiding some deep soul issues under the cover of being busy, busy, busy. This busy-ness may feed our ego and self-esteem in the short term, but eventually our spirits will need the eternal sustenance and lasting significance only God can provide.

We live in a very noisy world. It’s hard to listen to our own internal voice when we are so addicted to external noise and activity. We are surrounded and participate in so much mindless chatter chasing trivial concerns. Modern day communication proceeds at breakneck speeds, requiring instantaneous and thoughtless decisions and responses amidst an overwhelming amount of information.

We can’t wait for anything. We live stream video, talk to our devices (including our cars), watch the news as it occurs, make rash judgements without truth, hurry from here to there, hurry each other, never stop to listen, think, or contemplate. We get lost in the noise of our lives.

Silence helps us to wait, to listen, to understand, and to focus on God and other people. Our communication will improve as we learn to speak what is important and necessary. We will learn to recognize His Voice and hear it more often.

To discover how to add some Solitude and Silence to your life, check out the Practice Element of Journey One, Highest Honors.

The totality of creation is enough to blow our minds – the universe displays its beauty, detail, balance and complexity. Ever advancing technology has allowed us to peak in amazement at subatomic consistency, design and order – beyond anything we could have ever dreamed or imagined.

From the natural laws of physics and chemistry to the marvels of DNA and quarks, facts that were once thought impossible are now accepted without a second thought.

Such a marvelous creation only reveals an even more marvelous creator, The Most High and Glorious.

He has also imprinted our souls with a Proof of Life – as we are His greatest creation of all, stamped with His very own image. This drives us to develop and enforce Moral Laws which in turn determine right and wrong behavior. Without these we could not live together in community and benefit society.

We know some things are just good for us – things like life, procreation, knowledge, good health, hard work, family, reasonable conduct, justice, peace, beauty.

Things like the Moral Laws contained in the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule. We intuitively know these are true, and that they benefit us. This is proof of the stamp of His image.

If you’ve landed here you’re either looking for something…….or something is looking for you.

We hope you’ll stay awhile.

2018 brings a brand new redesigned Omniallinfinitude website making it easier and simpler for anyone to locate and download the Journey units from the Home page. All twelve Journeys are completed and available in PDF format. You can print them out or work through them on a computer, phone or tablet.

As before we are presenting information and tools for anyone to discover the Attributes of God and the Spiritual Practices necessary to know Him and personally become more like Him. This material is free to use, appropriate for personal or group study and should take around two months to complete each one.

Please begin with Journey One, Highest Honors, and engage the rest in order. Journey One is challenging because it is an introduction to the format as well as shares information that may leave you with more questions than answers……and that is on purpose. Every Journey Unit builds on what is presented in the prior ones. Make sure to go the distance.

The world is constantly changing,
and the current pace is beyond fast.

Life gets blurry.

And with this fast paced life comes

Lack of depth
Lack of knowledge
Lack of experience
Lack of obedience
Lack of graciousness
Lack of mercy
To say the least…..

And rushing into to fill this lack comes the

Rise of idolatry
Rise of violence
Rise of greed
Rise of bullying
Rise of intolerance
Rise of oppression

And so we offer our OmniallinfinitudeJourneys
As a way to stand against the rising tide,
A way to find life and light in spite of the hopelessness,
And an anchor in the waves of uncertainty and endless change.

We have completed revamping the website into a simple place to access and download the 12 Omniallinfinitude Journeys for your own personal or group use.

The internet has become such a crazy, ever changing destination, life is so scattered and fast, so we sought to use the best it could offer and hope to lead you to quieter offline places to complete your Omniallinfinitude Journeys.

This blog will be for my reflections on engaging the attributes of God and the spiritual practices as I continue my own Spiritual Journey with Jesus. I will also share resources I find helpful, verses and quotes that speak to me, beauty I find in photographs, and my own struggles with the ways of this world.

There will be no way for anyone to contact us via this website – so much spam and junk and virus attacks occur so we have locked it down. There will also be no comments on the blog for website security purposes. We can be reached via FB Messenger and we are looking into a presence on other social media platforms.

This process has taken 10 years and has been rewritten and reorganized multiple times. We have tried to make it as easy to access as possible. The PDF can be downloaded and viewed and completed on your computer or tablet, or you can print it out and fill it in old school.

This is a free resource. We have no plans to publish it in a book form or to charge for it. We are not interested in causing any uproar or trouble and will ignore any attempts of others to do so.

We believe that God will draw as He wills those He wants to engage these Journeys, and we will continue to use them for our own personal one on one mentoring, small group and other discipling opportunities.

We welcome you once again to the Omniallinfinitude Journey,

A Journey of a lifetime,
One initially to know Jesus
And then to walk with Him,
Forever.